Chaotic Apéritifs by Tao Wong

Author:Tao Wong [Tao Wong]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Starlit Publishing
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

twelve

Maui Ribs with Pineapple Marinade

Bread enough for the guests, at least for now. He would keep a few warmed and heated, but he was needed back at the grill. He raised the temperature on the hotter side again, moved some of the meat away and set the pieces of chicken aside on a cooking tray to rest. Once he had cleared enough space and moved the now crispy-skinned pieces of chicken to the other side to continue cooking while other, cooked pieces were added to the hotter side after being marinated, he set the tongs aside and hurried the cooked chicken legs over to the warming rack. Those needed to cool and rest, to let the juices be reabsorbed so that when the meat was cut, it would be juicy and tasty.

All done, and still feeling just a tad hurried, Mo Meng was finally ready. Ready for the second main that had to be grilled. Marinated beef ribs, drawn from the fridge and allowed to warm a little to room temperature, sat in large steel containers, submerged in the marinade made earlier in the day.

Beef ribs had a problem. Their tendons, their gristle, were tough. Cooked directly, without further preparation, the tendons and gristle connecting the meat to the bones were unappetizing, unwilling to be parted. It forced a lot of effort from the consumers, making for a less than pleasant meal.

Humanity had come up with numerous methods for dealing with such problems. The most common method was to braise or boil the meat, slow-cooking the ribs to give the tendons time to break down and soften. Smoking the same cuts worked as well, the application of heat over a long period being the important aspect. For that reason, slow cookers had become popular, for the ease that it gave cooking and, importantly, the ability to make ‘poor’ cuts of meat edible.

There were, however, other methods of breaking down hard tendons and gristle. In this case, the use of an acid – the pineapple juice – that the ribs had been soaking in since the morning would speed up the softening process. This had the added advantage, unlike braising, of keeping the ribs extra moist.

It only worked, of course, on such a short-term basis when the ribs had been sliced thin, no larger than a centimeter and a half at most. If it had been cut into beefier chunks, it would have required significantly more time to get the appropriate level of tenderness.

So, here they were.

Tongs dipped into the steel container, grabbing the long slices of marinated ribs. He pulled the sections of ribs out one by one, marinade dripping, white fat and white ribs glistening down the line as he spread the meat on the grill. He placed it cross-wise to the grill lines, so that it would not fall between them, the constant hiss and spit as the marinade dripped into the flames and coals echoing through the kitchen.

Mo Meng worked fast, lining up ribs all down one

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